What's on in Liverpool: Easter Bank Holiday 2016

Liverpool bounces into the new season this Easter with the Spring Food and Drink Festival at Great Baltic Warehouse on Friday 25 and Saturday 26 March, which completes its nifty package of street food and live music with its very own gin garden. You'll find globe-trotting flavours from traders including Maray, Laura's Little Bakery, Meet Frank, HOST, Lucha Libre, Creole Kids, Sapporo Teppanyaki, Slim's Pork Chop Express, Salthouse Tapas and Coffee & Fandisha.

Over in the Wirral, The Ship and  Mitre are also throwing an Easter Beer Festival at Hulme Hall, Port Sunlight from Thursday 24 to Sunday 27 March, where more than 100 real ales from across the country will be joined by 40 other continental beers and 40 ciders, along with entertainment from live bands throughout the weekend.

Albert Dock will be getting into the spirit with a weekend of spring-related family fun, including chocolate making and decorating workshops at Ziferblat (Mon 28 Mar), easter egg hunts (Sun 27 and Mon 28 Mar), a mini-farm with ducklings, chicks and rabbits in the Anchor Courtyard (Fri 25 Mar) and lots more. 

Use the Easter weekend to lap up the last of interactive creative workout Art Gym at Tate Liverpool, multi-disciplinary group show Left Hand to Back of Head, Object Held Against Right Thigh at the Bluecoat and Playing by the Rules at The Royal Standard as all three exhibitions approach their ultimate demise.

There's lots of wholesome stuff going on in Liverpool's alternative cinemas, with the arrival of The Railway Children – the filmed version of York Theatre Royal's award-winning production at the National Railway Museum – at FACT (Mon 28 Mar), plus ultimate 80s fantasy The Neverending Story, also showing at FACT (Sat 26 and Sun 27 Mar).

The Courtroom Cafe will be screening Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, complete with a Willy Wonka-style afternoon tea, while Liverpool Small Cinema (now one year old, would you believe?) continue their Women in Polish Cinema season with 1959 film Night Train (Thu 24 Mar).

Theatre-wise you can camp things right up to 5000 with Easter pantos Peter Pan at St. Helens Theatre Royal and Snow White at the Epstein, which even features none other than TV's James Hill. We have absolutely no idea either.

Either that or spend an afternoon drenched in the nostalgic tunes of Rodgers and Hammerstein as Multitude of Drops Theatricals Ltd. perform a new cabaret revue, Something Wonderful, at The Lantern (Fri 25 Mar).

You also have the chance to jump on board a classic family adventure with the stage show of Michael Rosen's We're Going on a Bear Hunt at Liverpool Playhouse (Tue 22-Thu 24 Mar).

If it's live music you're after, your best bet might just be the sunny pop project of Beach Fossils' Zachary Cole Smith, the Brooklyn-based DIIV at the Arts Club (Sun 27 Mar).

[DIIV]

Or equally it's D-I-S-C-O o'clock with Odyssey at Liverpool Philharmonic's Music Room (Sat 26 Mar) – whack on Going Back to My Roots beforehand if you want a dangerously catchy guitar lick to set the right tone for the evening.

Otherwise you're looking at The Beautiful South's Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott in the main room of the Phil (Sat 26 Mar, sold out so returns only), October Drift at Maguire's Pizza Bar (Fri 25 Mar) or guitarist/bassist duo Martin Harley and Daniel Kimbro at the Phil's Music Room (Sun 27 Mar). 

Westlife's Shane Filan's in town, too, if things get desperate. Like, really, really desperate.